


In Another Life

by ThatRavenclawBitch



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season 7 AU, Season 7 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 03:16:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11774373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatRavenclawBitch/pseuds/ThatRavenclawBitch
Summary: Rumple is cursed to be a detective in Seattle. Belle finds him and needs to get him to fall in love with her once more to give him a TLK. Season 7 speculative fic.





	In Another Life

Detective Gold never forgot a face.

He’d always had an eye for details. It’s what made him so damn good at his job. But faces, those were his forte. One glimpse of someone on a subway 20 years ago and he’d be able to tell you exactly how and why he recognized them.

Which was why the girl watching him from the corner of Roni’s bar, an open book perched on the table in front of her, was so disconcerting.

She was at least 20 years younger than him and damn pretty to boot. She certainly wasn’t interested in him, old, grizzled policeman that he was. And even if she was, Gold wasn’t interested. He glanced down at the chunky gold ring on his right ring finger, a memento, a constant reminder of the ones he had lost. No, Gold didn’t have much time for pretty girls in bars anymore. He just suffered through the daily drudge of his life until the blessed day he got to check out. He just hoped he’d take down as much of the city’s scum with him as he could when the time came.

But it wasn’t the girl’s age, or her striking blue eyes, or even the fact that she was blatantly staring at him that needled Gold. It was the fact that something tickled at the back of his mind, something that told him he knew the girl, but he just couldn’t place her.

“Hey, Roni,” he called across the bar between them. His old friend whirled in his direction.

“You need another, Gold?” She asked, already reaching for the bottle of his favorite whiskey she kept on the back shelf.

Gold waved her off, motioning for her to come closer.

The bar was hardly crowded on a Tuesday afternoon. It was barely 5 but Gold was off the clock and he had nowhere else to be. Roni kept her place clean and well stocked. It was more than he could say for his apartment.

“Who’s the girl in the corner?” He asked lowly, nodding in her direction. “The one who brought a book to a bar?”

Roni’s eyes followed the nod of his head to where the girl was sitting. She looked pensive for a moment before shrugging, her dark curls bobbing with the motion. “I don’t know.”

Gold arched an eyebrow. “You know everyone in this neighborhood,” he countered.

“Yeah, well I don’t know her,” Roni said. “She must be new. Lots of new people moving in these days what with Belfrey Developments buying up all the land.

Gold sighed. He didn’t want Roni launching into another one of her long-winded tirades on the evils of gentrification.

“If that woman isn’t stopped we’re all gonna end up priced out of our homes, you know that right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gold said waving a hand. “But about the girl…”

Roni stepped back from the bar, crossing her arms against her chest and leveling Gold with a look.

“You’re finally looking to get back into the game, eh?”

Gold snorted. “I think not. She’s half my age. She just looks familiar.”

“Sure she does,” Roni said with a wink before returning to washing bar glasses in preparation for the after work crowd.

Gold stared down into his whiskey glass, feeling the girl’s eyes on him like a prickling sensation all over his skin.

He chanced a glance over his shoulder, meeting the girl’s eyes briefly. She smiled at him, wide and beaming, before he turned back to his glass.

This was ridiculous. He knew her. And clearly she knew him. For some reason, he just couldn’t remember how.

Gold downed what was left of his drink, dropping a few bills down on the bar for Roni and crossed over to where the girl was sitting.

Her smile grew as he approached, threatening to split her face in half. She closed the book in front of her, giving him her full attention. The bar lights glinted off the gold embossing on the title of her book. “Her Handsome Hero”. Romance, he supposed. He’d never heard of it.

“You look amazing,” the girl said with a little shake of her head, her eyes tracing over him in a way that made him want to shiver.

Gold looked at her questioningly.

“Excuse me?”

The girl snorted a little laugh. “I just never thought I’d live to see the day you chose jeans over a suit,” she said motioning at his outfit. “It’s a good look.”

Gold glanced down at his jeans and white button down, even more confused. He was strictly a jeans and a t-shirt kind of guy and had been as long as he could remember. He had one suit in his closet that he’d had for a decade and only pulled out if he had to testify in court.

“I think you have me confused with someone else,” he said. For some reason, that made his heart sink. The girl had been staring at him because she thought he was someone she knew. He wasn’t sure why that was disappointing.

But the girl just shook her head again. “I’d recognize you anywhere, Mr. Gold. No matter what you choose to look like.”

She knew his name. Not an impossible feat in a close-knit neighborhood like Hyperion Heights, but intriguing nonetheless.

Gold pulled out the chair across from the girl, sitting down hard.

“Have we met?”

The girl looked incredibly sad for a moment, but before he could analyze it, she’d blinked it away, the bright smile back on her face.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes mysteriously wet. “In another life.”

That was certainly a cryptic way to put it. Gold’s instincts told him this was a bad idea. He’d made a lot of enemies in his line of work and this girl could have been planted to distract him, to get him to let down his defenses. He shouldn’t trust her.

But inexplicably, he did. He couldn’t see a single bit of trickery in those blue eyes, so warm and bright.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember,” he said finally.

“I know,” the girl said with a nod. “But that’s alright. You will.”

With those enigmatic words echoing in his head, Gold did the only thing he could think of.

“Can I buy you a drink, Miss…?”

“French,” she filled in. “Belle French. And, yes. I’d love that.”

Gold headed back to the bar to order them a round, casting a glance back at the strange girl as he went.

Belle. The name stirred something deep in his memory, something he hadn’t inspected in years if ever at all. It was a pretty name for a pretty girl. He would buy Belle French a drink, and hopefully by the end of the evening, he’d solve the mystery of why those blue eyes seemed so familiar.


End file.
